


Above the Water, Wind, and All Bad Weather

by LoxleyAndBagell



Category: Original Work, The Masque of the Red Death - Edgar Allan Poe
Genre: Blood, DISCLAIMER: story and situation only loosely based on Poe's story, F/M, Isolation, also warnings for--, descriptions of death and dying, descriptions of sweating blood, hematidrosis, it's actually a beauty and the beast basic thing LOL
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 17:42:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12040956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoxleyAndBagell/pseuds/LoxleyAndBagell
Summary: The Devil in the abbey entertains a guest.





	Above the Water, Wind, and All Bad Weather

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe we're here.

The devil’s favorite pastime was weeding around the walnut tree that grew in the great hall. There were plenty of other plants growing out of the floor, up the walls, dripping from the ceilings, but he felt a specific obligation to the walnut tree. After all, he’d been the one to plant it.

He liked how he could spend hours at the job, the feeling that more would sprout up the second his back was turned. He liked how, when he was done, there was usually fallen fruit to gather up, and once he’d tossed it away he would find even more weeds to pull up.

Best of all, the fruit that he’d leave to rot and compost the tree would make the dirt like ink, and everywhere he trailed the stuff would become stained. (The bloodstained spots would never be covered up, would always stain a shade darker than the rest of the marble and bay floors, but he could imagine, couldn’t he?)

The ink-dirt also came in handy on those rare days he was overcome by the desire to play “Prince Prospero and his Court.” (Never Strega Luca, though. Not even when he bothered to think about her.) On those make-believe days, he would raid the abbey rooms for increasingly rotting sheets or curtains and wrap them around himself like a cape or a gown.

Then, he would scurry. Through the halls, the secret passages, the attic and cellar and the rainbow colored rooms, anywhere he thought he could escape and hide. It lasted until he came to a mirror and screamed at his own reflection, toppling over in fanciful death throes, wiping the brown-black mess around his eyes where tears would fall, by his nostrils where mucous would drip, all over until he looked to be sweating the stuff.

It would go until he’d laughed himself sick, got bored, and returned to check on the weed-progress.

There was always something to do.

 

 

The devil had read every book in the castle, and his favorite had been the ghost stories. He must have read every book with them five times over, and had gone so far as to organize them the first few months he'd been there, but had never felt tempted to re-enact them. There was nobody to scare inside except himself (and the bold critters who'd seen stranger), and too many of the ones he really liked involved going out of doors, something he hadn't done since he'd come. All his knowledge of the world outside came from the windows (which he kept as best he could) and his ears-- the mourning dove that lamented another interrupted sleep, the generations of hawks given away by their own learning children, to the toads and frogs in the swampy mirror pond. Every day, every year, he'd listened as the sounds grew richer and their timing more precise as the white roses and box hedges became shaggier, wilder, choked out by evergreens and wildflowers.

The one thing he truly hated about the castle was the winter. Hated how the white hid the dead stalks and rotting branches. It just felt dishonest. The devil rarely looked out over the tree line. At first, it had been an accidental oversight-- he'd been so preoccupied with his new housing situation, in the beginning. Once the novelty had worn off, years had passed and his view was so obstructed he just couldn't see without putting in some significant effort. One could accuse him of being a very lazy devil indeed, but that wasn't necessarily true. If the matter was a very pressing one, or very unusual, he could make more than the necessary effort.

That is why he didn't miss the distant smoke over the tree line that afternoon in late November. He didn't want to make too much of it; The thread of smoke looked far away enough for comfort, but if it did come closer then the abbey would stand by virtue of his being there. Besides, maybe it was something good. Maybe Strega Luca's little town was thriving once again and people were living there and burning something (or someone) on purpose.

He watched until the smoke died away, until the first hour of the next day. It was a good way to pass the time, and it was a comfort to see that the hawks and doves didn't seem too worried about it. The frogs and toads were better indicators of these things, but they had been silent for several months.

Once the smoke dissipated without any further growth, he made ready to go downstairs and check the walnut tree. However, that was the time that a cloud of birds rose from the trees a dozen or so yards away and flapped into the sky.

It was certainly an unusual matter. What was more important was that it was likely to become pressing.

More birds continued to flee their safe trees in small groups, like puffball fungi spores, and it would have been amusing to watch were it not for the obvious trail they made right to the abbey.

He imagined, a little hysterically, that this would be a fine thing for the hawks and owls if nothing else. He knew there was nothing to fear, that he was as big and frightening as it got around here. He knew this the way one knows venomous snakes and sharks are afraid of humans, yet are still not eager to encounter either by surprise. Just because he was more powerful than Man didn't mean, after decades of lost time, he was ready for one to climb up that slope, hike through those trees, certainly set on his abbey as the one secure shelter in the wee small hours, to inevitably face him.

Six deer leapt out from the underbrush with another burst of birds into the air.

Perhaps whoever it was didn't know he was here. Perhaps he could act like one of those book-ghosts and scare them away, and that would be enough. Perhaps they were only lost, needed a place to sleep before straggling away. Or, or worse, perhaps they saw the abbey's walls and saw just what Prospero did, and he would have to stain the walnut-black floors red again, because there was no Strega to tell him he didn't need to, not anymore, and, and--

As if spat from the trees, an ape-like creature on all fours sprang forth. He took a startled step backwards, inhaling through his nose so sharply he thought it might bleed. When the creature made no further move, he dared to step nearer to the window, taking the time to look closer. It was a human, and certainly not one used to going about on all fours. It seemed to be a pose necessitated by earlier exertion, as if it had-- given the state of the black cloak and yellow garment-- literally run itself ragged.

"Get up," said a rasp-dry voice that he failed to recognize as his own. "Get up."

The creature, the human, did move eventually, in trembling marionette jerky drags forward. He knew where it wanted to go, to the sunken oak door that hung to the doorframe by a thread. But there was a marsh before it, and even if all the toads and snakes were sleeping, the water wasn't, and it would freeze whoever fell in--

\--just like the creature was doing. Except it wasn't so much falling as it was flailing. Drowning in two inches. It would drown, he knew it. It would find a way, if it was too tired to go upright then it would drown there. He watched it slither away from his line of sight, and he was grateful for the small mercy of being spared watching.

He stopped being grateful when the falling door's apocalyptic crash echoed through the abbey. Perhaps it had fallen on the creature? It was heavy, despite its age and neglect.

In the stillness that followed the crash, he fancied he could hear the winded panting. He didn't have to imagine the wet cough. 

Several wet gasps later, a roar like the last holiday firework shook under his feet--  _"OUT."_


End file.
